It's interesting to go back to see what the Tories thought in 2007. In August 2007 they published 'Freeing Britain to Compete:Equipping the UK for Globalisation'. It was largely the work of John Redwood. This happened at exactly the same time as the world's financial markets began to collapse. In it they said:

The last ten years in particular have been good years for the world economy as a whole. They have been characterised by two massively favourable trends.

The first is an era of easy money. The main central banks worldwide have opted for low interest rates, the ready creation of credit, and tolerance of innovatory means of financing public and private sector activity through big increases in debt. It has been the era of public/private partnerships, specialised credit-based funds and funds of funds, collateralized debt obligations, collateralized loan obligations, credit default swaps, special purpose vehicles and many other similar ways of raising borrowing throughout the financial system.

The second has been the remorseless downward pressure on prices of both goods and internationally traded services from the migration of business to lower wage countries in the East using newer plant and equipment, and from the application of new web based technology that is revolutionising business models. ...

The UK has not performed that well against this very favourable background.

Note the language of August 2007: easy money, the ready creation of credit, financial innovation - all these are things that they said were massively favourable trends.

We need to remind them of that often. And to hold them to account for it.

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You’ve put your finger on something here which is the big trick Labour is almost always missing, Richard. Take the apologies from the two Eds at the recent annual conference. Now I may have missed it, but when apologising – which they needed to do (but a bit overdone for my liking) – there was no attempt that I heard where they went on to say, ‘but the Tories bought into this madness even more than we did – example (as you have here, or any number more)’.

From what I remember of the period 2000 – 2007 (even into 2008) there were numerous examples of the Tories calling for more, faster, greater, etc, etc, moves to capture/exploit the ‘favourable trends’ noted in your excerpt. Fertile ground for endless attacks. Sadly we just don’t seem to witness it.

Easy money i.e low interest rates is something that you continue to be in favour of, indeed you believe it is essential. Similarly the ready creation of credit. “Financial innovation” is something that can justifiably said to be dangerously unstable, but it looks like your two thirds a Tory here!

Far from other people “assuming there is a simple world” it looks like all you’re doing is reverting to knee-jerk criticism of the Tories when it turns out you have actually expressed support for all these ideas in the past!

You seem to agree with these policies, however, so are you saying the Tories are wrong to have changed their minds (if they have)?

I’m not sure what the criticism is here: either central banks, low interest rates and government debt are bad, in which case you’re with the current Tories, or they’re good, in which case why would we want to “hold to account” the Tories for endorsing these policies?

Now, no one objects to 5. Everyone is against 4 since they imploded catastrophically; that they would do this was not clear until after the fact and is not a partisan issue as such. 3, in so far as it is beyond what the market would normally provide, was caused by 1. And 1. and 2., in my reading of this blog, you are in favour of.

Suppose that they were to now say “We were wrong, and we are now going to do something else, and that means that we are going to stop quantitative easing, stop the BoE providing cheap credit, immediately eliminate the deficit by heavily cutting public spending…” wouldn’t you be against all of that?

Does anyone have any more quotes from notable Conservatives at that time?

It is vital that the debate is reset with a bit of realism. Many people know that the Tories would have been wallowing in the trough from which Labour sipped, but it is reinvigorating to see the evidence.

In the real world New Labour, when elected, carried-on the work of the previous administration. Which includes the now-notorious Private Finance Initiative.
In fact, if anything, New Labour embraced everything that the old conservatives embraced….including secret handshakes, donations from the Great and Godless, and favouring those who only favoured themselves.

“You make deliberate straw men by assuming there is a simple world were a phrase e.g. Government debt is either right or wrong”

So you believe government debt was wrong then but right now, or what? Why? Do you think Labour should have been cutting spending in 2007, or that it shouldn’t have made the BoE independent so that it could have held interest rates high in the last decade?

I’m not trying to push a line here – my own views do not line up well with either party – I genuinely don’t understand what you’re arguing for. Seemingly that the Tories are bad whatever they do, but presumably not that. If certain policies were bad and inflated a bubble, why would we want to ramp them up to re-inflate it?

You will often hear Tories say they were against building up a massive debt. This is rather disingenuous. They did complain about Govt debt.
Back in 2005 Vince Cable said that the level of personal debt being taken on to buy houses was absurd & unsupportable. The blessed Martin Wolf (of whom we are not worthy) wrote lengthy articles on the point.
Without exception, the Tories, financed as they are by property tycoons, said that high house prices were a great thing & high mortgages were nothing to be afraid of.

Whenever this bunch of, to be kind, tripehounds, seek to seize the moral high-ground on the economy they should be reminded, if necessary painfully, that we don;t all have short memories,